


Centering

by nummel



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Dissociation, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Psychosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 04:04:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20057725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nummel/pseuds/nummel
Summary: Tyler doesn't know why he can't find balance.





	Centering

**Author's Note:**

> i remember some of these things they said word for word.

When Tyler was 24, he had a break. It had been over 72 hours since he’d slept – anyone in this condition could begin to experience hallucinations, phantom feelings, noises in the walls. 

He remembers someone standing in the corner of his room, stepping out from his closet. There wasn’t a name or a face to it, but Tyler knew as he stared that the other was staring back at him. 

And he was angry. He was so tired and so angry he remembers grabbing his bedside lamp, swinging it wild like a baseball bat. 

The cord held him back from pitching it across his room, like a harpoon, and then he screamed. 

He launched himself to his floor, slamming his nightstand into the wall over and over and over just with the palms of his hands. 

Screaming. Screaming screaming screaming non stop. Ripping the lamp from the wall and smashing it against the floor, shredded glass bursting out like a bomb set off in some crystalline structure. 

He hammered his desk chair into his desk like it was the head of a nail, the limbs of the chair cracking, splintering. 

He stabbed his way through the stacks of papers and journals and books, scattering, obliterating. 

Next, he remembers, came his fists. Pounding into his plaster walls. Screaming, screaming – not his screaming. 

There is someone in his room shouting, begging him listen, “It’s ok. It’s ok. You’re safe. Stop hurting yourself. You’re safe.”

Tyler remembers this new voice breaking through his own and he falls silent as his roommate, now whispering, a mantra, silent hot tears and pleading, “Tyler, you’re safe. Tyler, I’m here. Ty, you’re ok. You’re ok. You’re ok.”

Josh’s arms are static and the air is stagnant as he gets his arms around Tyler, wrapping up his frame to keep his arms still. To keep him in place. To keep him whole. 

Tyler remembers being still and quiet but Josh is crying into his phone and he’s talking and explaining and Tyler’s ears turn to cotton. Mush. 

Josh stays on the line as he lowers Tyler to the floor when his knees buckle. 

Josh stays on the line and rubs his back and his shoulder and his arm and Tyler remembers someone running their fingers through his hair. 

A knock at their apartment door registers to Tyler like shouts from above when he’s at the bottom of a pool. He remembers hearing Josh, in garbled tongues promising, “You’re ok. Tyler, you’ll be ok.”

When Josh pulls Tyler up, gentle, they take steps towards the door. 

Tyler remembers turning, so fucking angry, slamming his head against the adjacent wall. 

Once, twice, again...

He wakes up in the hospital and he knows he’s been sedated. He remembers. Some of it. 

The doctor comes in and talks to him, gentle, and shines a light in his eyes. Tyler doesn’t try to shy away. He knows this will help. 

Sound comes back faint when he sees the doctor move his lips. 

Tyler croaks, hoarse, whispers, “Please. I can’t hear you. Please.”

Hot tears come. They burn and run down his face and into his ears and the quiet dissipates. 

“Tyler,” he hears the doctor. He hears him. 

“Your pupils are uneven. You have a concussion. I just want you to rest.”

Tyler wakes to Josh holding his right hand. Tyler looks at his left and it’s swollen and his knuckles hurt and his brain won’t tell it to move and his skin is split open and he wants to beg the doctors to clean out the dried blood. 

He pleads this to Josh. His roommate is nodding and nodding and he’s pressing a button and there’s a nurse coming in. 

Tyler raises his voice just enough, but gentle, and asks for the doctor. He asks for the psych. 

It’s psychosis. He knows. His brain is heavy and his body is sedated but he hears the doctors and he knows.  
They tell him to rest and he squeezes Josh’s hand who squeezes right back. The psych enters with a rolling table and a computer and a gentle face. She starts working him through the tests that check off symptoms as blunt as his worn down pencils. 

He doesn’t know what each test is for. He can take a guess, but his head is still foggy and numb and just wants answers that will get him help. 

“Have you experienced periods of elevated mood that lasted longer than four days?”

Tyler whispers that he needs more information. 

“Elevated moods include the inability to sleep for days on end, being hyper focused on a task you must complete, or you believe you are invincible – you don’t need rest like other people do.”

He nods before she can go any further. He writes songs that don’t stop he just keeps writing and writing and he’s tapping his fingers and bouncing his legs and he’s pacing and pacing and pacing –

He tells her this. 

She continues. Asks questions. He nods and nods and his tears are spilling over again and he’s asking Josh to pet his hair gently to try and keep his mind from flying away. Josh runs his fingers through his hair as if it’s the last time he’ll get to touch Tyler. He cherishes this moment. Worships his scalp and skull and the beautiful brain wedged underneath. 

“This test was for Bipolar I, Tyler,” She says this to him slowly but he’s already nodding and his thoughts are rattling around in his head from the movement and the pain. 

“While your symptoms may have been piling up throughout the years, and while they may have been presented in a way that led you to a previous diagnosis, this disorder is most commonly recognized in someone’s early twenties.”

She takes a pause and asks if he is tired and needs a break.

No. He just wants help. 

“Antidepressants can trigger mania, Tyler. Your psychiatrist wasn’t trying to sabotage you –”

Tyler interjects. He knows. He just wants help. 

She nods, continues, “Zoloft, Lexapro, Prozac… These are called SSRIs – selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Your chart says your were on Prozac in November and were hospitalized in January.”

He nods, rasps, “I couldn’t stop shaking. I was awake and asleep at the same time. It was movement nonstop.”  
He’s so thankful that the look she gives him is empathy, not pity.

“During your hospital stay, they titrated you off of Prozac in a matter of days and onto Venlafaxine – an SNRI that works not only with serotonin, but norepinephrine as well. It’s been almost five months that you’ve been on it. Have you experienced symptoms prior to this episode, Tyler?”

He wants to explain and he’s tired and he’s embarrassed and he knows Josh can relay this information to her faster than he ever could. But he’s so ashamed that Josh has had to go through this. He just wants it to be done. End it. 

His voice hasn’t evened out between the sedative and the crying and the screaming, so he clears his throat, winces, and speaks. 

“I started cutting again. I hadn’t done it in so long and I started doing it again. Josh took me to the hospital in February and they released me the same night. He called the police on me when I sent him a message he didn’t understand and they took me to the hospital and then I got out that same night.”

He glances over at Josh who says, “He text me: “I’m glad I met you” – that was it. I had been at work all day and we hadn’t talked and when I got that message my heart seized and I called 911 to get to him.”

Tyler picks up where Josh left off, telling her everything she needs to know so she can help him – he almost sobs. 

“I just couldn’t stop. I kept hurting myself; it was like an addiction and I knew it and I tried so hard to replace it. I started taking drives up the highway at night and going over 100 miles per hour. I never got caught so I just kept going. 

I impulse bought so many things I burned through two thousand dollars in a single month. I didn’t even want anything – I just couldn’t stop. I was empty,” He sobs and takes a breather. 

She asks if he wants water and instead he just keeps going. 

“I tried food to fill me and I couldn’t keep it down. I started chain smoking cigarettes and going through a pack a night and then I tried throwing up over and over and nothing was working. I cross-faded and smoked weed and drank until I was blacking out and it didn’t work.

I got tattoos. I didn’t even know what I’d want even as I was sitting in the parlor chair and the guy was asking me what template he needed to draw. I just kept going. Black black black.

Then I started getting angry –”

Josh interjects, “We’ve been roommates since the start of college. Four years living together and I had never seen him angry. He was calm and focused and centered. I didn’t know what was happening and why he was hitting things and screaming and I walked in on him punching himself in the face until he gave himself a black eye.”

Josh has tears streaming. He wants this to be over too. 

Tyler asks the psych if he can be done. She says yes and thanks him for sharing with her and he sees she’s filled page upon page of notes about him. 

She listened to him. He’s so thankful. 

When she leaves, Josh runs his thumb over Tyler’s and says, “Thank you for talking to her. I know you lied to the doctors when I took you to the hospital – I know you lied when the police took you, too. I just want you to be safe.”

“I know, Josh. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Josh grips his hand harder and only says, “Thank you, I forgive you.”

The doctors want Tyler to stay in the psych ward for a week and go from there. They prescribe him Lamictal. 

“It’s a mood stabilizer,” His psych explains, “It’s here to balance out your depressive episodes. It won’t alleviate them but it will try to prevent them from dipping as low as they do.”

They prescribe him Seroquel. 

“It’s a sedative to help you sleep, and it’s like a cap to try and lessen manic episodes. Think of Lamictal as starting from the bottom up, and Seroquel as starting from the top down.”

Tyler looks over at Josh on his phone. He’s not texting. He’s googling. He’s taking notes. 

Tyler is so thankful. 

In the psych ward, Tyler’s activity is monitored by a camera in his room. He feels exposed. The nurses come and peek into his room in fifteen minute shifts. 

He colors and writes in crayon and markers. His psych isn’t in everyday, but her swing is caring and he feels safe when he tells her what he’s thinking. 

She listens. 

He meets with a therapist twice in the day to check on his mood, and she explains to him that anger is not a symptom of bipolar.  
He cries when he hears this and tells her that it just must mean he’s a bad person. 

She disputes this, “You’re human, Tyler. Anger can be triggered by sadness, exhaustion, mania, the list goes and goes. Just because it isn’t a textbook symptom doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to feel it.”

They talk and he comes to terms with this. He thanks her. 

When Josh picks him up at the end of the week, they sit in the car parked in front of their apartment and Josh asks him what his plan is. 

Tyler asks if Josh wants him to move out –

“Jesus, Ty – No! I want to know what your next steps are. What’s going to keep you safe?”

He admits to Josh that the coping skills he learned may not work. They’re silly. They may not restrain him. 

“I know, Tyler. But you’ll try?”

“I’ll try, Josh.”

They make their way into the apartment and Tyler knows before he walks into his room that Josh has cleaned up everything from Tyler’s break. 

The two hug and lay down in Tyler’s bed. 

“My therapist and I talked a lot about you,” Tyler whispers, “She said that when I ask you for hugs and you squeeze me tight it’s like you’re keeping me together and everything inside.”

“You can’t bottle your emotions, Ty. I will always hug you but I can’t let you use that as a way to cope.”

Tyler shakes his head and the comforter rustles with the movement. 

“No, not like that. It keeps my body and brain connected. It keeps me here so I don’t wander.”

“You mean your mind?”

“Yeah,” Tyler murmurs. 

Josh kisses his forehead and Tyler lets his entire body go boneless and sinks into the mattress. 

He’s here.

**Author's Note:**

> golden by hippo campus has a good center. thanks for making it this far & thanks for reading.


End file.
